How To Improve iOS 8 Battery Life: Some Important Tips

You upgraded to iOS 8 and now your iPhone/iPad is draining battery rapidly. That can be a huge problem. Here’s how you can not only troubleshoot it but also improve iOS 8 battery life efficiently.

As is the case with every iOS update, users tend to take a little while before they are able to figure out how to fix any bugs. Until the next iOS update which would (most probably) take care of the bugs currently faced by the users who have upgraded to iOS 8, you would want to know how to solve them before long.

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The fast draining of battery can be attributed to more than one reason. Knowing the real culprits will help in sorting it out. A wise assessment will bring solution to the fore.

How To Improve Battery Life In iOS 8

#1. Location Services

A number of apps and services use your location data in iOS 8 resulting in increased consumption of battery. The best way to solve this problem is to simply turn off the services you don’t use. iOS 8 gives you two options in Location Services– 1–Never, 2-While using the app. You can select any of the two depending on your use. If you are not using an app (or don’t want it to track your location), just use Never.

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Step #1. Open Settings

Step #2. Tap on Privacy

Step #3. Tap on Location Services

Step #4. Tap on the services you don’t use

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Step #5. Select Never

#2. Background App Refresh

Background app refresh is a new feature in iOS 8 that lets apps run in the background. This is useful when apps need to track your movement (pedometer apps for instance) and others like Twitter. It is helpful because apps don’t go into temporary freeze when you close them (that’s what happened in iOS 7). However, apps running in the background can eat battery.

Take a look at Background Refresh and Notifications. If these are loaded with apps and services which you don’t always use, you should disable/remove them.

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Step #1. Open Settings

Step #2. Tap on Background App Refresh

Step #3. Turn off the apps that you can do without having it run in the background

Let’s now check out Notifications and fix this too. With apps in the Notification center, they could be using ‘push’ which again has an impact on the battery. If you don’t want an app to be sending you notifications, turning it off will stop that app from pushing for updated content/information (which in turn helps the battery).

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Step #1. Launch Settings

Step #2. Tap on Notifications

Step #3. For apps you don’t want any notifications from, tap on the app and switch off Allow Notifications

#3. Make Sure You Have Restored iOS Devices As New

Setting up your device as new helps a whole lot in battery issues. But since it’s such a long and painful process for people with a lot of data, most people just restore from an old backup. The problem is, when you do this, all your old settings and cache are restored. That can (and does) have an impact on the battery/performance.

When you are upgrading to iOS 8, it’s always best to set up your iPhone as a new device. This way, you are starting from a clean slate. Then, as you add apps and data, you can figure out when the battery begins to act up.

#4. Turn Off The Power Hungry Apps

iOS 8 lets you know how much battery a particular app consumes. By turning off the apps which drain the battery most, you can fairly increase the life of battery.

Step #1. Open Settings

Step #2. Tap on General

Step #3. Tap on Usage

Step #4. Tap on Battery Usage

This shows you a list of apps and how much they’ve consumed (in 24 hours or in the past week). Remember that the percentage shown is not how much battery the app has consumed. It’s how much “consumption” the app contributes to the overall battery consumption.

As an example, if your battery is down 50% in the last 24 hours and an app like Facebook shows 50%, it means Facebook has eaten up 25% of your battery.

You can then go on to either remove the app, or disable certain services for the app (like Location, Background app refresh) to reduce battery drain.

#5. Turn Off Auto-Brightness

Turn off Auto-Brightness as it eats into a lot of battery if you use your iPhone/iPad under different lighting conditions. If you can set the brightness manually to a specific middle-ground where it just works in all the conditions, turn off auto-brightness. Also, now that you can set brightness levels from the control center, it makes sense to turn this auto-feature off.

Step #1. Launch Settings

Step #2. Tap on Display and Brightness

Step #3. Turn Off Auto-Brightness

#6. Turn On Reduce Motion

All those zoom-in-out animations when you tap on an icon or press the home button is part of iOS 7, carried over to iOS 8. How much of an impact it has on battery is not known but since it does use the processor/graphics, and that means turning it off can help in reducing battery usage.

That’s where Reduce Motion comes in. Reduce Motion can help your battery have better life. It reduces the animation effects.

Step #1. Launch Settings

Step #2. Tap on Accessibility

Step #3. Tap on Reduce Motion

Step #4. Turn ON Reduce Motion

#7. Keep Auto-Lock In Check

Does your screen remain on longer than needed? If yes, it is one of the prime reasons draining battery.

Jignesh Padhiyar is the co-founder of iGeeksBlog.com who has a keen eye for news, rumors and all the unusual stuff that happens around Apple products. During his tight schedule, Jignesh finds some moments of respite to share side-splitting contents on social media.